EccentricAnomaly writes: A story over at Science News quotes Alan Stern (former head of NASA Science missions) as saying: "The three strongest candidates [for extraterrestrial life] are all in the outer solar system" He's referring to Europa, Titan, and Enceladus. So why is NASA spending $2.5B on the next Mars Rover and planning to spend over $6B more on a Mars sample return when it can't find the money for much cheaper missions to Europa or Enceladus?Link to Original Source

Looking for life on Mars has some of that element. Getting to Mars is cheaper (and a lot faster not requiring any fuel saving, time consuming gravity assists) than the outer solar system. We also know how to land on dirt, drive on dirt and scrape up dirt; we have no idea how to land on ice in vacuum (will it cause the ice to "geyser" or some other phenomenon), drill through (steel hard) ice and then perhaps send an autonomous submersible under k